Abstract [en]

A non-profit organization is mostly dependent on voluntary work. Because of people working for free when it comes to this sector, their unpaid work becomes invincible within the traditional accounting that only brings up monetary transactions. Almost all non-profit organizations follows the traditional accounting, which is also the reason to why their ability to asses and declare their social work, are very limited. Researchers within the subject have pointed at the importance of non-profit organizations accountings of social information, when it comes to calculation to get a correct picture of the organizations performance. Because of non-profit organizations main priority not being to gain profit, their stakeholders are not able to find out the result of the organization, only from the traditional accountings. Researchers also emphasize the need of developing principals and methods that non-profit can use when it comes to their accounting, because there is no standardized regulations for this matter yet. The purpose of this essay was then to examine how voluntary work can, in a concrete way, get emphasized within a non-profit organization. The Red Cross in Vänersborg was chosen for this study. With help from qualitative interviews, information about their volunteer and social work could be received. The literature survey made for this essay, showed that researchers highlights the problem with the non-profit organizations accounting. But only a few have given concrete methods that can be used. With help from valuation methodologies made by Mook, Richmond & Quarter (2003) and Bowman (2009), the volunteers worked hours could get a proper and concrete economic value. The methods showed different values though they were counted in different ways. This made it possible to compare them to each other. Both of these methods makes it easier to form an opinion about how much volunteer work puts down in the organization, by making merchantable comparisons. The Expanded Value Added Statement method gives a higher value while the Volunteers Contribution to Revenue method gives a lower. You could then form the opinion that the value is somewhere in between. The Expanded Value Added Statement method makes it possible to assign the social objects a monetary value that includes the financial information. The Volunteers Contribution to Revenue method is a result-based approach, which is to calculate the income the volunteers generate to the organization. There are also keywords calculated within this study, where different reports from the income statement relate to one another and shows the efficiency of the organization. This study has shown that it is possible to analyze and highlight the social work of a non-profit organization with help from appropriate methods and tools.